I have zero interest in a CPU built on a six year old microarchitecture. Not when I know that there's a (presumably) vastly superior successor around the corner. There are too many important ISA additions, architectural devlopements, and process advancements on the way.

When I go to upgrade to a new smartphone this year, I'll definitely be getting an ARM device. We'll see how Atom looks in two years, when I'll be moving to another phone.

Intel's made great progress, but their current showings are just the tip of the iceberg. I'll wait until the fruit of their ultra-mobile efforts are fully ripened.Reply

I find this comment curious. If this SoC runs all the benchmarks at parity (and early indications is that it does) why do all the things you mention even matter? Does it really matter on your day-to-day if your smartphone has SSE4 or AVX?

If the chip has demonstrably the same performance as its current competitors I'm not sure how your desire to wait for something generically 'better' due to a new architecture has any merit. You could say the exact same thing about waiting on new QCOM or Samsung chips.Reply

I think he refers to the massive architecture upgrade Atom is up to within a year from now. That should improve performance more than the entire 6 previous years combined. Can they still keep power under control? I think so.. Intel has gotten quite good at this, and there'll be the switch to 22 nm too.

If one is not in a hurry for a new phone one these are good reasons to wait. It's the most cost-efficient way of using your current phone for sure :DReply

Clovertrail is pretty nice for a 32nm chip, but what Intel needs to compete with Tegra4/Snapdragon S600/Samsung Octa and other quad A15 chips is 22nm Quadcore Baytrail/Valleyview(originally Q3 this year, might be delayed) with Ivy IGPU tech(Gen7).

The good thing is I heard on the recent Anand Podcast that Intel is acclerating Atom dieshrink schedule and will go to 14nm next year with the next Atom+ Haswell IGPU tech.Reply

The problems as always, always, always been cost though. Intel is used to its margins and doesn't want to play for $10-20 chips (except that's what is going into phones). If Intel was really serious about mobile, then we would have seen them make a serious push years ago.Reply

Margins for high end SoC's are not that bad. You're thinking of the total cost, not the margin. consider die size. if you can make 4x as many per wafer you can sell them at 1/4 the cost and keep the same margins. I don't think the margin argument holds as much water as many people claim.Reply

Intel already sells an Atom E620 to use in embedded appliances for $19, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from, if they're aiming for $300+ phones and tablets there's a healthy market even if they won't compete for the low end. Just because you're Chipzilla doesn't mean it's easy, just look at how long it's taken them to get decent graphics performance. Yet them seem to gain a little with each generation...Reply

I don't think any of the major players with inhouse ARM design teams would want to be locked into x86 solely designed and manufactured by a single entitty by this point either. Besides, now with current gen high-end ARM chips being more than fast enough for usual phone stuff, the next wave will be next-gen low-end ones with the same level of performance for developing markets with margins so low Intel won't be able to compete with to recoup their enormous R&D costs.Reply